Underwood Biographs

At its heart, UNDERWOOD BIOGRAPHS is the germination of a seed planted by a letter my brother and I received from our grandfather when we were nine and seven respectively (as well as the Underwood typewriter he wrote it on, which I still have and use). That letter, in no less than 11 legal-sized, single-spaced pages, outlined the vast extent of our family tree and summarized the stories of our many known generations with a humor and heart-felt flair that both fascinated me and inspirited me with a yearning that drives me to want to tell stories to this day.

Both boughs of my family tree – and the stories they hold – mean a tremendous amount to me. And the older I get, the more I realize how much they are part of me, and how essential they are to who I am.

From one bough, I descend from no less than three Mayflower Pilgrims. And, if you keep tracing back through the associated branches, I can claim descension from English and French knights and kings and such, all the way back to William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, and beyond. (Though, as my granddad liked to say, there were undoubtedly plenty of clerks and cutthroats in there along the way.)

On the other bough , my grandparents were Latvian diplomats living in Washington, D.C., when the Soviet Union overran their country in June of 1940. The Russians sent my great grandfather – a prominent intellectual and academic – off to a gulag in Siberia, packed into a crowded box car on a cold night. He never returned, but years later his son (my grandfather) somehow was able to negotiate the release of his wife (my great grandmother), most likely in exchange for some low-level Soviet informant that the United States had apprehended, detained, interrogated, and had no more use for. (What strings he pulled to achieve this -- and how he came by them -- none of us to this day can say.)

Now that I’m moving beyond the middle years of my life, I’ve come to recognize how invaluable all these family facts and stories are – whether they're about my grandfather and grandmother translating intercepted Soviet communiques during the Cold War, about the heart-rending decisions my other grandfather and grandmother made while working for the WPA and then the Defense Department, my fifth great grandfather's time as a Squirrel Hunter during the Civil War, my sixth great grandfather settling and farming the northeast corner of Ohio, my seventh great grandfather serving as an Ensign in the Connecticut militia during the American War for Independence...or my second great aunt being the first in the family to gather all this information into a digestible collection.

So, given this persistent yearning (and apparent genetic inclination), I’ve turned to this biographical work, creating UNDERWOOD BIOGRAPHS to help folk like you to capture the knowledge, lore, and details of your family’s history, or the life of a specific family member – the joys, the sorrows, the mundanities, the adventures, the hilarities, the good luck and bad, and the many remarkable turns of events. And I do so, dedicated to reflecting all the love and admiration you hold for your loved ones and their stories.

In terms of bona fides, here are some relevant highlights:

·      I worked for three decades at an advertising agency as a copywriter and creative director, as well as a ghost author and contributor to industry publications.

·      I am an award-winning songwriter and performer.

·      I earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and American Culture from Oberlin College.

·      I have traveled throughout the United States collecting folklore, stories, and songs from all sorts of Americans.

·      I have worked as an intern at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

·      I attended The Juilliard School in New York, studying musical performance…until I realized how boring and uncreative it was for me there and dropped out, moving on to all that stuff listed above.

·      I grew up as a biannually-uprooted Navy brat until junior high school, when we settled in Bergen County, New Jersey in a little bedroom community at the end of a New York City commuter train line that backed up onto the then-still-undeveloped hills of the Ramapo Mountains, over which my brother and me ran wild, lost in adventure and reverie.

·      …how much time do you have?

Also, I have an extensive network of creative colleagues and vendors who can expertly augment my talents and produce amazing pieces for your delight.

Perhaps most importantly, I love talking with folk – particularly older folk. I love hearing their stories and history, and I love capturing and presenting them in a creative manner, and with an appropriately representative medium, that gives their stories life and brings out their greater truths. 

And, if you like, I’d be delighted and honored to help you with yours.